FOR PROGRAMMED USE OR INTERVENTION
Chickened Fingers: A DIY Performance
Equipment and personnel needed as follows
FOR THE CHICKEN
- Enough cooked chicken wings or tenders to adequately fill the trays, with refills if thought necessary
- Large numbers of catering cards to arranged among the chicken pieces on the trays.
. These should be the size of business cards and can be easily
. printed on business card templated sheets, or cut to size.
*This is all that is needed for a minimalist intervention. In that case the trays of chickens and cards will be placed on tables and left by participants with or without permission. No special clothing is necessary.
FOR THE SERVERS
If there will be servers wandering around among the public as at an art opening, they should dress to resemble workers in poultry plants, and if possible wear splints or bandages to mimic typical injuries. They should remain silent even if questioned by the public but if it seems appropriate give out cards.
- A thin rain coat or pancho
- Waterproof shoes or boots
- A shower cap or hairnet
- An apron (preferably smeared with watered down mustard
. and tomato juice to resemble chicken blood and guts)
- Ace bandages or other splints used for repetitive stress and other injuries
(I had moulded fiberglass splints up to my elbows used
when I tore the ulnar collateral ligaments in both hands)
Sarah Xerar Murphy in Performance
FOR THE CARDS
At least eight of the following statements should be included on the cards, with ten or more repetitions. They can appear in any size or design format. Formats may be changed depending on the length of each statement or they may remain uniform.
Sophie’s right hand has tightened into a permanent claw
Florence now has one hand significantly larger than the other
Olga has developed a permanent misalignment of her spine
Sonya’s wrists have worn out
42 chickens a minute
2,520 chickens an hour
30,000 exactly repeated motions per shift
180,000 exactly repeated motions per week
Speed, Ruth, work for speed! One cut! One cut! One cut for the skin. One cut for the meat. Get those pieces through!
U.S. statistics reveal one in seven poultry workers are injured on the job, more than double the national average.
Poultry workers are fourteen times more likely to suffer debilitating injuries stemming from repetitive trauma
Ganglionic cysts
Claw hand
Cold room syndrome: hands and joints affected by working in constant cold
Infections of the skin
Infections under the nails
The birds just keep coming
Ten to twelve hours a day
Six days a week
Infections of the skin
A lot of people get cut. Blood and flesh fall into the meat.
The birds just keep coming
The birds just keep going
The birds just keep coming
The birds just keep going
This performance was developed with Calgary’s Women Creativity and Political Voice during the early 2000’s for a Resistance Culture event. I had already become aware of the conditions of poultry workers and the incredible numbers of chickens they piece in a minute, an hour, a day, and how little they earn from it, from a student in one of my ESL classes, so thought of them—as it is pretty much women who do this work—when invited to do a piece on women and work. At the poultry processing was the fourth most dangerous work in the US and pretty much the same in Canada, directly following meat packing, which has among other things a higher kill ratio, something I learned from another ESL student who had lost his arm to one of the badly failsafed big machines, and whose close friend—the next one to have an accident on the same unchanged machine— was killed by it. In court, the employer said they did not, as immigrants, understand instructions on how to use the machine properly, despite the fact my student was in an advanced class and minimally all the immigrants in the plant were in communication with each other. My student told me, with great understanding of irony in his new language, that his friend had been longing to go home and now, with his body being returned to the Congo for burial, he had gotten his wish.
Dangers for meat and poultry workers have changed little in the intervening years, though, apparently, there have been some small improvements. I remembered those workers when learning of the ICE raids and deportations from Mississippi last year, how much they contribute to the daily lives of Americans by bringing them cheap chicken, and how much they lose in the process, what advantage is taken of them by the companies that hire them, and I decided they should minimally be paid compensation before leaving their home of many years.
Today, April 18th, 2020, as I ready myself to post this performance, I think again of meat and poultry workers. This time of those in the great processing plants in the US who are becoming sick with Covid-19, and too of all the other agricultural workers foreign and domestic who in both the US and Canada continue to work to make sure food continues to arrive on people’s plates. And, from the fields to the factories, how much more they deserve for their work in both credit and compensation than they are ever given. And feel the same sorrow I did when I first did this performance. I would love to see it done as an intervention again and again as we are released from social distancing requirements… or perhaps a virtual version?
42 chickens a minute
2,520 chickens an hour
180,000 exactly repeated motions per week